This Calabrian Briar Was Considered Superior To The French Kind,
And Mr. Kerrich Had Large Sales On Both Sides Of The Atlantic; His Chief
Difficulty Was Want Of Labour Owing To Emigration.
We passed, by the wayside, several rude crosses marking the site of
accidents or murders, as well as a large heap of stones, where-under lie
the bones of a man who attempted to traverse these mountains in
winter-time and was frozen to death.
"They found him," the guide told me, "in spring, when the snow melted
from off his body. There he lay, all fresh and comely! It looked as if
he would presently wake up and continue his march; but he neither spoke
nor stirred. Then they knew he was dead. And they piled all these stones
over him, to prevent the wolves, you understand - - "
Aspromonte deserves its name. It is an incredibly harsh agglomeration of
hill and dale, and the geology of the district, as I learned long ago
from my friend Professor Cortese, reveals a perfect chaos of rocks of
every age, torn into gullies by earthquakes and other cataclysms of the
past - at one place, near Scido, is an old stream of lava. Once the
higher ground, the nucleus of the group, is left behind, the wanderer
finds himself lost in a maze of contorted ravines, winding about without
any apparent system of watershed. Does the liquid flow north or south?
Who can tell! The track crawls in and out of valleys, mounts upwards to
heights of sun-scorched bracken and cistus, descends once more into dewy
glades hemmed in by precipices and overhung by drooping fernery.
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